Coordinators' December checklist

Well we are nearly at the end of the first term of this academic year. Thanks you for all your hard work so far this year in promoting, encouraging and supporting your school's progress with primary languages.Here is your December checklist. (You may want to look back at some time too at the September  coordinators' checklist and the October checklist too).

• Have you booked your free VLE support phone call and /or webinar with our Network Support Coordinaor ,Will ,yet?  Contact him to organise this before Christmas or for early in the New Year on william@primarylanguagesnetwork.co.uk 
• Have you booked your 1 to 1 consultancy this year yet? Just contact us via our website contact page to organise this. 
• Time to save the date too ! We have booked the annual conference at which you are entitled to a free place.It is on 29 June 2017 at the Statham Lodge Hotel Lymm.
• The Tracking and Assessment folder has now been placed in the Teaching Resources area of the VLE .Have you had a look in it yet?
• Have you seen the updated Puzzle It Out resources in the Tracking and Assessment folder?We have added reading texts for every one of the reading assessments in French and Spanish and transcripts in English to support you or other members of staff ,if necessary?
• Have you used the native speaker listening sound files for the Puzzle It Outs yet ?The sound files have target language and English transcripts to support you?
• You may want to clipboard the reading and listening Puzzle It Out resources in to relevant year group folders in your User file area on the VLE.
• An addition to the assessment spreadsheets will be colour coding of the emerging, meeting ,exceeding blocks as requested by coordinators who attended the CPD last week.This will be added to the spreadsheets in the first week of December.
• You may want to access and download the My Learning APP if you are using IPads in the classroom as you can then link the VLE to your IPad,You can then access the VLE from your IPhone and IPad    and also instantaneously upload evidence and resources to the userfile area.  
• If you are interested in having a taster session or  several sessions of Yoga with French in school, then we are now taking bookings and requests for Spring and Summer 2017 .Just contact us via the website contact page  with your request. This is open to both network and non-network members.
• Our snapshots of teachers delivering "real" language lessons based on the VLE PLN SoW  have started again this year.We have created a snapshots folder in Subject Planning - MFL coordinators tools with all the snapshots from last year and this year. Great to share with colleagues as our theme this year is "You can too". We are sharing realistic and achiveable activities..Here is one example of the snapshots so far this half term .Daily routine Year 6 Spanish ,November 2016
• The local network twilight meetings for Spring 2017 will be announced at the start of 2017 and the theme will be "Spring in your Step" and will be based around drama, dance, Art and PE. Watch this space for details of a twilight near you. Local network meetings.Non-network members are welcome at these events,so feel free to bring along a friend too. 
• Schools are now signing up for the Primary Languages Development Award.This is natonally available to both network and non-network members and if you have already applied then Catherine , your PLDA mentor , will be contacting you early in December to start the process.More details about the PLDA are here. First impressions from the  coordinators who have begun the process is that it is manageable and is helping them put language learning firmly on the map in their schools. 

• We are delighted to announce that Emilie Woodruffe will become our Associate Language Teacher Coordinator from January 2017.Emilie will be out about from January , observing the associates , continuing to share our "snapshots of learning" blog posts, meeting with school coordinators and training the associates on a regular basis.
• We are delighted to announce that from January ,PLN will be offering a new service "Active Lingo ", where schools can buy in a half day or day's input from expert practitioners in Dance with languages,Drama with languages ,Culture and language learning, PE with languages... to name but a few. Watch the website for further details.
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And finally to help you through December we have out together a folder in Teaching Resources area  -Seasonal Specials -Autumn 2  folder called "Our Christmas 2016 Box"  with ideas and activities from KS1 to Y6 KS2 which you can use in class. These range from Christmas card greetings phrases,Christmas PE lessons with sound files and language support for non-specialist teachers to nativity sketches , to games and reading and writing activities .We hope you find these useful. Once again you can just clipboard relevant resources into year group folders for other staff to use too.  

Remember to take a look in the Seasonal Specials Spring 1 folder as there are activities for Epiphany and New Year for that first (dare I say it) lesson back in 2017 too.

Plus here are a few blog posts with ideas to use now and in your first couple of weeks back at the start of the new academic year.

Festive lights 

Star gazers

Advent calendars with a difference and a reading puzzle activity

Xmas in a GIPHY

Jewels in the 3 Kings crowns and adjectives, writing activity 

Pass the galette or the roscon de reyes - sound spelling game

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